Many people find Mr Nawaz Sharif’s attack on Mr FArooq Leghari disagreeable. What have we come to, they wonder, if the President of Pakistan (who is also the Supreme Commander of the Armed Forced) is now being dragged into the mud by a man whose own claim to fame rests on a littany of corrupt and illegal practices. Mr Leghari’s reputation as a man of integrity and competence precedes his accession to the Presidency, they say, so the opposition leader should have been more circumspect in his allegations.
However, from Mr Sharif’s point of view, it makes good sense to try and discredit the President. Thanks to the 8th amendment, the Presidency occupies a pivotal position in the political system. In the past, when the opposition wanted to destabilize and overthrow the government, all it had to do was to drive a wedge between the President and the Prime Minister, as in 1990 and 1993, and stand by to reap the harvest. Unfortunately for Mr Sharif, this possibility has been ruled out in the present circumstances, given that President Leghari and Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto belong to the same party. The next best thing for Mr Sharif is to demean the Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces so that if and when Mr Bhutto loses the confidence and support of the army high command during a time of crisis, the army’s Supreme Commander doesn’t have the moral authority to come to her rescue or stake a claim in his own right.
Mr Sharif’s strategy should not be dismissed out of hand. Political corruption is so widespread and so blatant that ordinary people have become deeply cynical about their elected representatives. Many are easily led into believing the worst. The theory that “if enough mud is slung, some of it is bound to stick” is ripe for the plucking. In view of such perceptions, there is no doubt that Mr Leghari has been stung by charges of impropriety.
On the face of it, of course, there is nothing illegal or improper about selling some of your land at market prices. But when the buyers turn out to be front men for Yunus Habib, at whose hands scores of leading politicians have already been tarred by the brush of corruption, and the seller goes on to become the Head of State, people are likely to raise eyebrows and ask wheher or not the sale of the land also connotes some dubious “connections” between buyer and seller.
Mr Sharif is insinuating that some such connection exists between Yunus Habib and Farooq Leghari. He says that Mr Leghari did Mr Habib a favour when, as finance minister during the Balakh Sher Mazari regime last year, Mr Leghari intervened with the State Bank of Pakistan and got Mehrn Bank off the hook in a case of financial indiscretion. Mr Habib, alleges Mr Sharif, returned the favour when he agreed to buy Mr Leghari’s land some months later. Obviously, Mr Sharif’s implication is that neither of the favours was proper.
Mr Leghari’s supporters have come up with forceful rebuttals. If Mehran Bank was reluctantly bailed out of trouble by the Mazari government, it was only because allowing it to go under would have been an unmitigated financial disaster — over 75 per cent of its deposits belonged to government institutions and agencies. A run on mehran Bank would also have undermined foreign confidence in the Pakistani banking system. As far as the land is concerned, everyone knows that Mr Leghari sold it at prevailing market rates and not a penny more, so the question of any favours from Mr Habib simply does not arise. At any rate, when the land was bought, Mr Habib had no way of knowing that the PPP was going to win in October elections, let alone that Mr Leghari was going to become the President of Pakistan soon thereafter. And so on.
Which of these arguments and counter-arguments is palatable to Pakistanis is difficult to access. What is certain, however, is that Mr Sharif has played his cards more adroitly than Mr Leghari. For over a month, Mr Sharif has been threatening to go public with his allegations. Yet the government made no move to preempt him. If the President had issued a brief statement two months ago, acknowledging last year’s business transaction and pouring scorn over any implication of misdemeanour, the wind would have been taken out of Mr Sharif’s sails. Indeed, if government spokesman like Mr Naseerullah Babar had been better prepared or briefed when Mr Sharif launched his attack in Parliament, the damage to Mr Leghari’s credibility could have been contained. As it turned out, however, the government fretted and fumed and eventually fumbled into a mass of contradiction and invective. The matter of who is taking whom to court, for example, is still unclear. A perfect way to help Mr Sahrif make a mountain out of molehill.
There may be many skeletons still lurking in the cupboards of Mehran Bank. Sooner or later, they will out. Mr Sharif is now threatening to ‘expose’ the prime minister’s connections with Yunus Habib. Forewarned is forearmed, they say. If Mr Bhutto and her lieutenants are clean, they should not unwittingly stumble into the same mud as President Farooq Leghari.